Sunday, July 7, 2013

Man of Steel: In a World of His Own

You'll believe a man can fly!

If there had never been a superhero movie made before in the history of cinema, then Man of Steel would have been the kind of movie they made. The film is filled with such static moments that 'allow us space' to ponder the true import of having a super man among us, that it reminded me of the tag line from the very first Superman movie, 'You'll believe a man can fly!'

But this is 2013, and not only do I believe a man can fly, I know it. I've seen Iron Man and Thor do it, and even Spidey and Hulk manage a pretty good approximation. It feels like DC are trying to reinvent the superhero movie. But that bus left long ago and Man of Steel, with its soft focus arthouse shots - that just seem out of place in this kind of film - doesn't add anything new to the superhero lexicon and doesn't stand up well against the worldly, sassy movies that are streaming out of the Marvel stable as Phase Two kicks off. By comparison, MoS has very little in the way of humour and the dialogue, particularly between Clark, Lois and Ma Kent, is dull and prosaic.

While I appreciated the whole Kryptonian genetic codex subplot, and I really liked Russel Crowe's Jor-El contribution, the 'super-smackdown' fights between Supes and a range of Phantom Zone Kryptonian baddies just felt like a rehash of the building crunching that went on between Neo and Agent Smith in the last Matrix movie a whole 10 years ago. And after breaking more than enough buildings in this first of the Superman reboot movies, one wonders what DC has left for the next outing, because if it's more of the same, or a rehash of the old Lex Luthor/ Kryptonite deal we've seen in two previous Superman movies then give me Iron Man 4, 5 and 6 anytime.

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SF quotes

"the Culture had placed its bets—long before the Idiran war had been envisaged—on the machine rather than the human brain. This was because the Culture saw itself as being a self-consciously rational society; and machines, even sentient ones, were more capable of achieving this desired state as well as more efficient at using it once they had. That was good enough for the Culture."— Iain M. Banks